Enter the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) -- the world's largest MMA organization -- and its owners Zuffa. Zuffa holds a virtual monopoly on MMA, buying any substantial would be competitors and slowly engulfing/minimalizing them. The UFC were among the large big media interests who sent bribes [source] to politicians regarding SOPA -- but declined to mention (officially) whether they were for or against it.

Zuffa/The UFC were among those bribing politicians to pass SOPA. [Image Source: i-Sight]

But company's management have made their perspective relatively clear. Company CEO, co-founder, and co-owner Lorenzo Fertitta wrote in a letter to Rep. Lamar Smith (R- Tex.) -- SOPA's House co-author:

The piracy of live sporting events is illegal, it kills jobs, and it threatens the expansion of U.S.-based companies. This is the issue that keeps us up at night, and we are very concerned about the theft of our shows.

Despite pulling over a billion in revenue a year, Mr. Fertitta contends that pirates cost the UFC tens of millions in extra revenue.

The SOPA support caused the UFC's homepage to become the target of the frustrations of Anonymous, the world's largest hacker collective. Anonymous claims well into the ten thousands of technical savvy participants worldwide and are a fascinating social phenomena in that they act as a group-without-a-leader, with individual "anons" organizing activist hacking raids.

The group may be controversial, but it's earned praise for its pro-democracy work. The group played a critical role in "Arab Spring", a movement that deposed several Middle East dictatorships.

In the UFC's case, their website was hacked on Jan. 22:

II. The Fight -- Dana White v. Anonymous

UFC President Dana White, also a co-owner in the company, took to Twitter blasting Anonymous and promoting SOPA. On Jan. 22 he wrote, "@masontbell9 nice fake account. Hacking the site is not a big deal dummy. We are not in the website biz. Today was a great day!!! Pats!!!!"

The on Jan. 22 he taunted, "@fjbar75 the Internet is the coward capital of the world"

But yesterday the exchange grew more heated after Dana White threw his support in for SOPA in a UFC on FOX 2 post-press conference interview. He commented, "Is SOPA the perfect bill? No, it's not. The only thing that we're focused on is piracy. Piracy is stealing. If you walk into a store and steal a f------ gold watch, it's the same as stealing a pay-per-view. I don't care what your twisted, demented idea of stealing is. These kids grew up on the Internet never had to pay for anything, so they don't think they should have to."

Dana White called out Anonymous in an interview, challenging them to do their worst.
[Image Source: ProMMA Now]

From there he issued a challenge to Anonymous: "Keep hacking our site. Do it again. Do it tonight. These guys look like terrorists now, and a bill that was about to die is about to come back."

Those proved to be fighting words. Over on Twitter things got real ugly, real quick:

YourAnonNews Anonymous (News): Ahoy @danawhite – what do you have against the Internet? We’re just curious, as we were quite surprised at the harsh tone of your comments.

Anonymous (News): @danawhite – I’m curious, do you support what we do, in terms of activism & raising public awareness of critical security/privacy issues?

danawhiteDana White: @YourAnonNews i love the Internet. It helped us grow our biz. Stealing is stealing! And hacking into people’s (expletive) is terrorism.

LucGib, Anonymous member:@danawhite @YourAnonNews LMAO terrorism? Really. Tell that to the ppl who lost their lives fighting actual TERRORIST!

Dana White: @YourAnonNews same guys on the net bitching about fighter pay are the ones who are stealing from them. That are our partners on PPV!

Dana White:@LucGib @youranonnews not true, fighters get a piece of PPV and even if that wasn't the case u think it's ok to steal from us?

Dana White: @YourAnonNews and yes cowards hide on the Internet! At least I’m man enough to say all my (expletive) in public and not hide behind a screen name!!

Dana White:@YourAnonNews no i’m a fight promoter. I put on fights. People are stealing my shit on the net and selling it or selling ads on it.

AnonyOps Anonymous (Ops): @danawhite tell that to the freedom fighters in Syria (and in many other countries) who, if their names were known, they’d be murdered.
Retweeted by YourAnonNews

Anonymous (News): @danawhite Just because you’re a “fight promoter” doesn’t mean you can’t also have an opinion on social issues that affect society.

Shortly after members of Anonymous created a tag on Twitter -- #OpUFC and began exchanging tips about attacking the site and going after Mr. White personally. They breached the site's backend at 3 a.m., defacing the page yet again and redirecting its traffic to a webpage by the (intended ironic) name "ugNazi".

The Pastebin linked above appears to contain Dana White's various properties, including his home address, his social security number, his phone number, and his criminal history.

Soon after a copycat reportedly released info on Dana White's family members, which JoshTheGod condemned.|

The hackers scored a "knockout blow" on UFC President Dana White, quieting his anti-Anonymous rhetoric. (For the non-MMA folks out there, this is a tribute to the famous "Rashad Face" meme. [Original Image Source: UFC]

But the fallout was clear -- Anonymous had delivered a knockout shot to Dana White. But after the fight was over Mr. White remains defiant and continues to taunt Anonymous. He writes:

But today after he perhaps became aware of his doxing he clammed up and has been silent on Twitter, dropping his repeated comparisons of Anonymous to terrorists. Maybe Mr. White has grown a bit punch shy. Or maybe he's just biding his time and plotting a rematch with Anonymous.

Either way, this has been a pretty interesting scrap thus far.

Comments

Threshold

Username

Password

remember me

This article is over a month old, voting and posting comments is disabled